random posts

Friday, 13 October 2017

As an update to a project first covered last summer, we learn that an international consortium of engineers and alchemists have brought the first negative-emissions power plant on-line in Iceland.The scientists and their backers were understandably muted about their works and successes—hoping that industry would do a better job of policing itself and leave direct-air capture—having filters sequester atmospheric carbon-dioxide by transforming it into stone—as an absolute last-resort. Additionally, despite the fact that we’ve probably passed that pivot point and considering what’s at stake, the scientists were also not wanting to seem too pie-in-the-sky considering the prohibitively high costs associated with constructing the facilities—but desperate times call for a symmetrical response and right now with many places battered by climate-change driven natural disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, no price can be too dear. This first prototype plant paired with the geothermal generating station in Hellisheiði (to make it truly carbon-negative) is so far able to reabsorb the annual emissions of an average family home, but a May demonstration project in Geneva captured the equivalent of twenty households with costs coming down.